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Maggie Irwin and Chase Dopson have nothing to prove. Their first restaurant, Pastificio d’Oro, was a success by any measure—selling out daily, featured on The Magnolia Network, beloved by the St. Johns community, often considered the best pasta in Portland. It would have been easy to rest on their laurels after that. Instead, they shut it down and built something just as considered but completely fresh: the French Cajun pop-up Ma Cher.
The decision to switch cuisines happened before Pastificio closed. Both Dopson and Irwin were feeling burnt out, physically and creatively; Dopson himself handmade every pasta served at Pastificio using a 3-foot rolling pin, a mattarello.
“It was really sacred, special food coming directly off of Chase’s hands,” Irwin says. But Dopson felt compelled to explore his other culinary love, Cajun cooking, and he started playing with recipes at home as the idea for Ma Cher took shape.
“The more I poured myself into it, the more I wanted to share this really important food with more people,” he says. Irwin was supportive from the get-go.
“Knowing how talented Chase is, it was a no-brainer,” she tells WW.
Pronounced “ma-sha,” Ma Cher (which means “my dear,” a nod to Irwin’s Acadian grandmother and Dopson’s grandparents from Louisiana) started as a prix fixe pop-up at the recently shuttered Dame. Quickly, both Irwin and Dopson realized the small restaurant’s layout isolated them from their guests and the fixed-price menu wasn’t landing quite right.
“It just didn’t feel like us,” Irwin remembers. “We both thrive on being able to interact with people while cooking and hosting. It’s my greatest joy.” So they pivoted back to their previous model of “elevated casual” dining and started looking for a second home. Thankfully, seafood pop-up Merrow was about to move on from its residency at Cafe Olli. Irwin and Dopson jumped at the chance to take over.
Cafe Olli’s bright, airy space became tactically important for Irwin, too. Last spring, she was diagnosed with mixed connective tissue disease, an autoimmune condition that affects the use of her hands, and her health deteriorated rapidly.
“I really had to adjust my expectations of what my body could and couldn’t do,” she says. And she is doing a lot. In addition to cooking alongside Dopson, Irwin selects the wine pairings for the whole menu and bottles and sells the dressing she uses on her namesake Maggie’s Salad. The consistency of serving familiar dishes (like her salad) and the fact that her longtime best friend, Taylor West, works with the duo is a comfort to Irwin.
“Between her and Chase, I know I can always ask for help or hands,” she says. “Being in an open kitchen has been crucial for me to find myself again.”
Now, guests can lean over the bar to compliment Irwin on her ’90s mom playlist. And she in turn advises them to keep the tangy vinegar from the marinated blue crab claws so they can use it later as a dipping sauce for the perfectly crisp, cornmeal-fried catfish. Irwin and Dopson breezily chat as she dollops pillowy buttermilk whipped cream on a slice of carmelized, gooey pecan pie. “I have no idea how to bake,” she laughs. “People often assume I make the pie, maybe because it has a maternal connotation. When they ask about it, I’ll grab Chase and say, ‘Tell them about your pie journey!’ That man can really make a pie.”
You wouldn’t guess it from his calm demeanor and easy jokes, but Dopson dials in when trying to make the best version of a thing. “I got really fixated on making the greatest ragù in the same way I’ve become completely fixated on gumbo,” he says. Both have similar bases of layered, comforting flavors—carrots, onion and celery for ragù versus onion, bell pepper and celery for gumbo. “The holy trinity!” he jokes. “In both cases, it’s a lot of slow cooking, pot watching, and spice layering.”
The same technique is used for what he and Irwin believe is their most underappreciated dish: butter beans and shrimp. Dopson sources shrimp from a one-boat family operation out of Montague, La. This creates more work on their end, like coordinating dedicated overnight shrimp shipments. But it’s worth it to them to support small, ethical operations and get access to excellent seafood.
“Maggie calls it our ‘shrimp-ment,’” Dopson says. “They really are special shrimp.” He poaches them in broth with creamy, slow-simmered beans, eventually spooning the dish all over a fluffy bed of rice, really letting the “special shrimp” shine. The pair care about shrimp so much Dopson even has a bumper sticker that reads, “I’m the Shrimp Whisperer.” Irwin saw his and had one custom-made for herself that says, “I’m the Shrimp Whisperer’s Wife.”
This ethos is what sets Dopson and Irwin’s restaurants apart—a slowed-down, earnest approach born of genuine curiosity and a desire to do right by their dishes and diners. “We approach this the same way we always have,” Dopson says. “Keep it simple, keep it good, and try to use the best, most traditional ingredients to honor the food.”
EAT: Ma Cher, 3925 NE Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd., macherpdx.com. 5:30–9 pm Sunday–Tuesday.
